Actual problems in virtual world

The world has become more virtual these days, thanks to social media. It is quite difficult to distinguish between real and fake. Apart from this, most of us are least bothered about the possible consequences of likes, shares and comments in social media. Let us begin with a story.

A boy challenged his friend to gather a crowd around him without speaking a single word. His friend accepted the challenge and went to an open space on the roadside and started gazing at the sky. Passersby saw this strange act but they didn’t care. Few minutes passed, the boy continued gazing and then people began to observe. A few more minutes later, there was a crowd of people all gazing at the sky!

It is indeed very easy to mislead someone and in this age of social media it is even easier to mislead thousands and thousands of people at a time. We don’t think before we share, we don’t care about what we share but we just like, click and share. A massive portion of the users in social media are definitely literate but even then we see a lot of fake, meaningless posts being liked and shared by thousands of people. Very often we come across a post which informs everyone that the month of March of a particular year is uniquely special as it has five Saturdays, five Sundays and five Mondays and it also claims that “this rare event happens only once in 823 years”. It is totally misleading as simple arithmetic tells us that any month of 31 days has exactly three consecutive days which occur five times in that particular month. If you divide 31 by 7, then the remainder is three. So a thirty one days month has four complete weeks and three extra days and obviously these three days must be any three of the consecutive days of the week. If arithmetic burdens you, then just open the calendar in your phone or computer and see for yourself that March 2008 also had this rare event and March 2025 will also give us this rare event. This is definitely not a once in a lifetime occurrence. In fact, every year, the months of January, March, May, July, August, October and December have three consecutive days which occur five time in that particular month. I was surprised to see the number of likes and shares received by one such fake post.

Another such post appeared a few days back. It connected the age of a person with the number of holy sayings in a religious book. The post said that the book has 119 holy sayings and if you subtract the last two digits of your birth year from 119 then you will get your age. Amazing, isn’t it? Now let us do some simple arithmetic. Present age of any person in the year 2019 is obviously equal to the difference between 2019 and his birth year. Say, for example, my birth year is 1987 and so my present age is 2019 – 1987 = 32. Now see this: 2019 – 1987 is equal to 1900 + 119 – (1900 + 87) which is equal to 119 – 87. So equivalently my age is 119 – 87. Did I need to use the religious book or the number of holy sayings in it for these obvious calculations? In the same way, my age in the year 2020 will be 120 – 87. Well, then there may come up another such fake post claiming a divine connection with another religious book having 120 sayings! Did you notice that according to the above mentioned post, the age of someone born in 2001 comes out to be 118? But even with such wrong information, this post managed to get liked and shared by thousands of people.

Well, these instances are among the ‘not-so harmful’ ones but many a times, likes and shares in social media have resulted in dangerous consequences. There are individuals, societies and organizations spreading hatred in various forms via social media. Sadly, we tend to get brain-washed by these posts and we serve as preachers of hatred by sharing such posts. We hardly care to verify the facts. We need to understand that social media is a platform where anyone can post anything without any reliable references. In technical terms, the social media posts are not peer reviewed. Thus, anything that appears in ‘viral’ posts need not be the ultimate truth. We have our senses, we have our brains and we have our wisdom. Can’t we use any of these to judge what is right and what is wrong? Why should a random post by a random person from a random location mislead us? We are all aware of various photo and video editing softwares, aren’t we? But even then we get fooled by a number of posts displaying fake photos and videos.

It’s difficult to identify fake posts but it’s possible to learn a few ethics in social media and take relevant precautionary measures. Here are some quick tips. Ignore posts claiming that a new law of some kind has been passed by the government. Often, such posts do not mention the exact date on which the law came into effect. Ignore posts claiming that a particular authority will provide one rupee for each share of the news of a child in distress. Ignore posts displaying phone numbers for getting major surgeries done free of cost. These may be a part of organ smuggling. Do not share photographs of persons suspected to be child-lifters, thieves or murderers. Such posts have lead to dire consequences in recent pasts. Never judge persons on the basis of social media posts. Do not click photos and videos of accident victims. Help them instead. Photos, if clicked, should be submitted to police for further investigation instead of making it viral on media. There are journalists to spread the news with proper methodology. Another thing to note is that we shouldn’t abuse anybody with our posts and comments in social media. Well, we shouldn’t do that in the real world too ! Understand the difference between constructive criticism and abuse. Abusing in the name of freedom of speech and expression is not at all acceptable and is punishable under Section 66A of IT (Ammendment) Act 2008. Avoid engaging in heated debates on political or religious issues in social media as they often come down to abuse. It's wise to log out instead of elongating the textual abuse.

Of course, the benefits of social media cannot be denied. Social media has enhanced our interaction with a large number of friends and relatives. A large number of well-known educational institutions have created their pages in social media and we can interact with them from any corner of the world. Students can take advantage of various academic communities for learning new concepts, discussing various topics and for getting in touch with the latest developments. People are spreading their business via social media. Even politicians have joined social media to get in touch with public and to get their feedback.

Everything is well and good if we use it for a good purpose. Social media has ventured so deep inside our lives that we can never get rid of it. However, it is our responsibility to use our wisdom to prevent hatred and misleading information from getting viral in social media. We must remember that one wrong click in virtual world may result in a severe loss in the real world. So, let us not pollute this useful social platform with abusive comments and posts, let us not misuse it to spread hatred and let us not make it a weapon to humiliate anyone. Let us spread universal brotherhood, let us spread love and let us build a healthy virtual world in sync with a healthy actual world. Yes, we don’t want the social media to be anti-social !